By the time we reached the funeral home the next day, Vanessa had already chosen everything.
“I know exactly what he would have wanted,” she told family friends, dabbing at eyes that never seemed to water.
“The lilies were his favorite.”
They weren’t.
Dad hated lilies.
Mom loved them.
“And this photo. So handsome. He loved this one.”
It was a stiff corporate headshot from a retirement dinner ten years earlier. Dad had complained about that tie for a week.
“Vanessa,” I said evenly, “we have the picture from the lake house. The one on the dock.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She patted my arm. “That’s not really funeral-appropriate, is it? He’s in a T-shirt.”
Marcus turned and walked outside before he said something we couldn’t take back.
I followed him.
He leaned against my car, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“She’s listing the house, Di.”
“What?”
“The house. Our house. I checked. She’s already got it listed with an agent. Photos and everything. She just hasn’t posted it publicly yet.”
Something inside my chest went very still.
“How do you know?”
“A friend at the brokerage. She started the paperwork three days before he died, Diane. Three days.”
I stared across the parking lot.
“I fixed it in time.”
“What?”
“Something Dad said. In the hospital. He said, ‘I fixed it in time.’ I thought he was rambling.”
Marcus looked at me.
“Fixed what?”
“I don’t know.”
At the funeral, the chapel smelled like lilies Dad had always hated. Vanessa had ordered three enormous arrangements for the altar.
Marcus sat beside me, jaw locked, hands folded so tightly his knuckles were white.
Vanessa sat in the front row in black Chanel, tissue pressed to a dry cheek. Every few minutes, she glanced around the room like a hostess checking a party.
“That’s not even his song,” Marcus muttered under the piano music.
“I know.”
“That photo doesn’t look like him.”
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